“American Horror Story: Freak Show” 4.2 – Massacres and Matinees – Written by Tim Minear; Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon; Starring Jessica Lange, Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, and Frances Conroy.
Apparently you can use a certain vernacular for “ejaculate” on TV now. I’m just going to lead with that.
Episode two of everyone’s favorite basic-cable smut introduced a couple new characters – Dell and Desiree have traveled all the way from Chicago to join up with Elsa and her troupe. Dell fails to mention the real reason for their departure, however. And since Elsa doesn’t know he murdered a dude with his bare hands, she writes up a contract and puts him in charge of the whole shebang. Intersex Desiree lives as a woman, and also as Dell’s wife. Dell and Ethel have a past, and via Ethel’s reaction to his arrival the audience learns he is neither welcome nor stable at the Freak Show. The troupe takes a trip to town to disastrous results, Gloria and Dandy continue to have a wildly unhealthy mother/son relationship, and Patti LaBelle makes escargot! I turned off a Harry Potter movie for this? The Cauron one, no less. Whatever, let’s get to it.
OK, I’m starting off on the wrong foot. Working from the AHS curve, this was actually a really good episode. We had plot and character development, genius performances, and some genuinely emotive events. Some heavy points were knocked off due to bullshit, but we’ll get to that. For now I’m offering up a solid B.
Act one opened with an obvious tribute to Tod Browning’s “Freaks,” and that is in no way a complaint. The performers rejoiced over drinks and cop-killin’ around the dinner table, and we moved into a quick comparison of Dandy and Gloria Mott seated at their giant, lonely dinner table. Dandy drinks cognac from a Waterford baby bottle (just, oh my God) and then brats his way into a storm out. His departure brings about some creepy foreshadowing when his mother mentions that Bad Things happen when Dandy’s in a mood, and also some baseball bat clues when Ms. LaBelle mentions that she found fur and teeth right before neighbors came to query about some missing cats.
The Mott scenes are gloriously filmed. The shots are Kubrickian – wide and patterned, with little specks of humanity for focal points. The staging somehow lends a fish eye feel, even though it appears they are shot with normal lenses. It’s truly beautiful. The use of some hokey effects in certain spots (Gloria’s drive comes to mind) lend more of a surreal tone rather than a lack of attention, and adding to the surrealism were the Alice in Wonderland references. Twisty joins Dandy on a croquet coarse with a white rabbit, Twisty himself rocks a gruesome Cheshire grin, and Dandy is wardrobed in periwinkle and white. Of course, in this Wonderland the cat beheads people and Alice has a fit when he isn’t allowed to join a sideshow, but hey I likes me some allegory so there you go.
And while we’re on the subject of Twisty, lets gush over John Carroll Lynch for a minute. He wowed me big time tonight. The man’s face is almost completely obscured and he can only emote with his eyes. Not even his brows – just the peepers. And tonight, even though I should know so much better, he almost convinced me that maybe Twisty isn’t so bad, just a broken dude who kills grown ups but loves kids. And he did it with only his eyes. MAN I’m glad they’re not going that route, however, because ew trite. Twisty had his little prisoners almost convinced as well, and then he whipped out a toy salesman’s severed head and I giggled because something is obviously wrong with me. In an ensuing pursuit, viewers got the long awaited reveal. I won’t spoil it all the way, but I will tell you it was not a face butthole as I had originally speculated on the twitters earlier today. It wasn’t quite a whomp-whomp event, but if you wanna shock me, mouth rectum would have been the way to go. The reveal wasn’t shocking, per se, to someone with 30 years of horror viewing under her belt, but holding to those same standards the FX were wicked impressive. And I congratulate the creative decision to go with “glimpse” rather than “close up LOOK AT THIS SHIT LOOK AT IT.” Restraint is not often seen in this show, so I’ll give credit where it’s due.
Else Marrs got a bit more development this week, and I’m a little disappointed that Lange is yet again playing the self-serving terrible mother figure. Elsa is devastated by her eclipse by the twins, and is now plotting with Bette in a scheme that will destroy the whole of Dot and Bette. I was looking forward to a new type of role for the actress, but I still enjoy her performance, accent, and again the dedication to those brows. I mean, oof.
Dell Toledo has inserted himself as the sandiest of buttholes, and relishes his new command with a gleeful abuse of power. He beats people up, lacks respect for the oddities that put food in his mouth, and mark my words he will end up fused with chicken parts by the end of the show. Angela Bassett’s Desiree is bawdy, vulgar, and flaunts her multiplicities like a perfect grade card. And I LOVE her. It’s so far unclear as to whether she supports her husband’s defective morals, or just goes along because she doesn’t have a choice. The prosthetics used for her tertiary boob were seamless, which isn’t surprising considering the history of brilliant makeup artistry on this show.
Evan Peters has grown so much in four years. His talent is measurably more awesome – it might be because he was reduced to grunts and hollers last year, or it might be because how awesome was Quicksilver, am I right? I mean – who expected that?!!? Who thought Kick Ass would have hard shoes to fill? Anyway, I digress.
As much as I enjoyed the extended episode, there are still some elements that thus far make me say, aloud to no one, “what the shit.” I am completely distracted by Ethel’s accent, which I have decided is less Dr. Evil and more John Travolta in “Hairspray.” Either way, don’t get it, doesn’t need to be there. And do you guys like Baz Luhrmann? I don’t. No disrespect intended, it’s just that his “tales out of time” thing isn’t really my bag. I understand he does it well, but I don’t particularly want to watch it. As such? These musical numbers are stupid. Like, I can’t even be articulate about it. I don’t like being this kind of reviewer. Sure, I rip the shit out of the show weekly but it’s all with a smirk because there truly are some amazing parts of AHS. But the singing ain’t one of ’em. It’s stupid. And when the Little Person started crowd surfing I remembered that I had turned off an Alfonso Cuaron movie to watch this and got so pissed I ate half a pint of red velvet ice cream.
The episode closed on a plot to eradicate Dell going horribly wrong, and Ben Woolf’s performance as Meep straight up made me cry. It made me realize what has been for me a major flaw in all the AHS seasons: A lot of people die, but I’m rarely invested in them emotionally. They’re usually kind of jerky across the board. But I’ve known these characters for about 180 minutes and I’ve already wept for one. Maybe that’s a sign of things to come, and this season will work out a cohesive narrative with sympathetic characters and a revelatory plot. Or maybe I’ll just hulk out when Michael Chiklis inevitably give us the ol’ razzle dazzle during a performance of “Hit Me Baby One More Time.”
For the record – if that happens I’m resigning and will watch naught but M*A*S*H* reruns every Wednesday night. But until next week, I might rewatch our two episodes to look for the clues Murphy has planted for season five.